My DH has had an emotional affair

[bullinthesea]

Hello,

I don't post very much, but I am a frequent lurker!

Sadly, I have discovered that my DH has been having an emotional affair with a woman at his work. I have met her a few times over the years, and have always liked her! (Not any more!).

He was supporting me through a nasty bout of depression, and she was also having problems with family illness etc, and it seems they got too close, whilst chatting. He has always been the type to help others out. I think perhaps his 'knight in shining armour' came out when he came across this 'damsel in distress'!

There were emails/Facebook messages/texts, (the texts were all deleted, but in plain sight on our joint itemised bill!).

I discovered the whole lot on Friday night, and confronted him on Saturday morning.

I told him to sit down and tell me the truth. He says that it was just a load of flirty e-mails, and that he knew it was wrong when he was doing it, that it had all fizzled out and that he regretted it. He was very remorseful, and asked whether I could ever forgive him. I told him it was about being able to trust him again.

I found comments such as

Him "I must have been on your mind, was this email meant for Mr X?"
Her "you're always on my mind"
Him "mmmmmmmmmmmmmm!"

And

Her "thank you for earlier, I feel a lot better now !!"
Him "yeah, me too, can meet up on Wednesday for a follow up if it helps :)"

Her "is there anything else I can do for you"
Him "there may be a couple of things that may rise up"

Him " look at you working on xyz"
Her "can never be too prepared?"
Him "I am always prepared!"

She also kept asking him about his knees, on one occasion, they were organising some work time, and he responded with:
Him "should be good"
Her " what do you mean, SHOULD......... Are your knees hurting?"
Him "no, they have recovered, it's my calf, I pulled it running this morning"

Another message went:
Her "how are your knees and feet now"
Him "well, no carpet burns! How are you, we,ve been thinking about you?"

Then there was the time about six months ago, when he was having some funny turns. He had to spend the day at hospital having tests. He had already phoned into work, to tell them that he wouldn't be in that day, and yet I discovered that he'd emailed her from the hospital, to tell her about the tests and said that it was scary, there were loads of exclamation marks at the end (and on lots of the other emails too). He then emailed her again later about the results, with the same message that he had texted to me a few minutes prior, but he'd added extra exclamation marks on hers.

A lot of the content of these emails (and some others that I haven't written about) suggests that things may have got physical.

He strongly denies that it got physical, and says that he doesn't even find her physically attractive. He has said that it was exciting, and that she had made him feel good, as it had felt like she wanted him. He also told me that she had tried to kiss him at an Xmas do a few years ago, but he didn't kiss back, and had thought it was odd.

I asked if he thought she might have a bit of a thing for him, and he paused and said, "yeah, probably".

I have told him that I am going to get tested for STIs, just in case, as I'm not sure I can believe what he's telling me, and want to be sure that I haven't caught anything.

We both cried a lot, and he buried his head in my lap and told me he was so sorry over and over.

I do love him very much, and feel that we became distant, (although things had been much better recently), that we need to focus on our marriage much more (he agreed) and do our best to recover the strong love that we always used to have.

Only thing is, if it did get physical, then I would have to end the relationship.

I am so confused, I can barely concentrate on anything, and I haven't a clue where I'd start if I suddenly found myself single - I'm a sahm, my son is 7, and I am not bringing in any income at the moment, so he supports us all financially.

I just don't know what to do next.....

Bull, when you find out the complete extent to which you have been betrayed, there really is nothing more devastating. NOTHING can ever hurt me as much as this, having your love trust and life ripped away from you - by the one person you loved, trusted and lived with. It is - people who are lucky enough to not experience this just can have no idea.

Well done for telling people. His little world is going to suddenly become very small.

"I felt neglected and like he had lost interest in me, and that it seemed he only wanted me for sex a lot of the time.

During that time, I was reading books on improving the marriage, and doing my best to work at things from my side, whilst he was obviously detaching from me" ...

Absolutely! My shelves were lined with self help books [all thrown away] as he detached more and more. He literally only touched me for sex. Then he started actively looking, and poor OW was the idiot who responded. 'If it wasn't her, it would have been somebody else'. His words.

This really is about them.

Sorry to be cynical Bull, but I got that speech as well. Please do what I didn't do - ask him to leave so you can have space to think.

I fell for the speech, and within months my IC observed: he has found out that there is no consequence. ie, he has gotten away with it.

Bull - when you find out about deceit on that level, the shock is just so difficult to deal with.

Only you can decide if you are able to, or even want to save your marriage. Your H can say all these things, but he has to really want to as well. You would need counselling together and separately probably. He would need to cut all contact with this woman and change his job so that he doesn't come into contact with her at work. I don't see how you can believe a single word that he says though now.

If they have been doing these things at work, then they are both abusing their positions and could well lose their jobs. What if they had been caught by a pupil? Were they supposed to be working when they were meeting up? They would be in big trouble and they know it.

As for his mother, well she is obviously going to stand by her son and she will believe whatever he tells her too.

He can blame as many people as he wants, and they all trot out the line, "well things cant have been right or I wouldnt have done it....." It is bullshit. If things aren't right, you should talk to your partner, not turn to somebody else for escapism.

I don't think that I could get over the level of deceit that your H has shown you, but as I said, it is your marriage and something that only you can decide.

Get your legal advice, find out exactly where you stand on everything. it will make you stronger and less afraid of the future too.

Yes, I would ask him to move out too. And you should be speaking to as many people as you can about this, stuff him. Get support where you can and don't let his mother make this all your fault.

OMG, Bull, he is still lying to you, he is still treating you like an idiot as he has done for the last 5 years (or more)
Of course, they have been shagging all this time, basically they have been having a relationship, sharing intimate thoughts and ideas for years.
His texts clearly refer to sex - shoulder massage - who does he think he is?
He won't show you the emails.
He texted her the moment you found out.
He begged you to keep it secret.
Yet, he is still insistent that there was a problem with you/with the marriage, with anything but him. How can you even stand to have him in the house with you?
Really, he is the worse kind of person because even now, he can't tell you the truth. I expect he is blubbing to his mummy about how bad you've treated him. He really is pathetic.

Hugs from here - such a terrible bombshell to try and come to terms with

If he is really sorry and wants to work on the marriage then he needs to be 100% honest and open. Sounds like he isn't prepared to tell the whole truth so there is no point in trying.

How fucking dare he blame you - he CHOSE to behave in this way instead of sorting things out.

Wobbly is right. You do need to ask him to move out. I never had that option because I discovered the texts/emails etc after he had moved out, and at that point I was so devastated and in such shock, that I begged him to come back. I threw my dignity out of the window and just begged him to try again. I was in such a state of shock because he left with no warning, no buildup of problems or anything, that I just didn't handle the situation well at all.

You need to ask him to move out, so that you can have the space to be on your own, and work out what you want to do. It will also make you see what life would be like on your own, and it will make him see what he has thrown away.

My XH was the one person that I trusted most in life. I adored him. I trusted that he would never leave me and that he would never deceive me with another woman. If the one person that you trust most in the whole world can treat you like that, it destroys your trust in everything.

The one thing that you can do now is to take control of the situation. and yes, tell as many of your friends and family as you want, so that they too can be disgusted by his behaviour and hopefully support you.

at his mum. But it means that he and she are scared.

I am sorry you are going through this. Do get legal advice and time to think.

In al honesty, I think you need space. Lots of space. Whilst he is feeling all sorry for himself and apologising ask him to leave and give you space. Do not give him a time frame, just ask him to leave to give you time to think.

Dont contact him, and concentrate on you and your DC.

This is what I did - albeit to a very different set of circumstances, and no where near the deception you have had to suffer. I found it made me calmer not having him around and a little easier to think about how to process everything.

Thinking of you, and wishing there were a way to bottle strength and send it over. xxx

Hello Bull. You are grieving for something that has been lost. I know this only too well. I think if your husband - and all those husbands and wives who cheat - knew the actual emotional damage that their behaviour caused they would be genuinely appalled. In my life, like a lot of women, I have experienced rape and I have been cheated on - and the latter was much worse (if similar in some ways). You must feel as if your heart has been ripped out.

The thing is, he probably doesn't have the emotional intelligence to be able to understand any of this, focussing on his own pain and shame, seeing it as a bit of sordid nonsense that should be brushed under the carpet. His mum's reaction is very telling: it sounds like he learnt to lie and minimise at her knee. You are the only one in this sorry tale who has behaved with integrity. This may be part of the problem - he's crap so tried to paper this over by choosing a decent human being to marry. I have to say that you sound too good for him. This is very bad news for him, but actually excellent news for your future. xxxx

It does sound like a physical relationship, where did the carpet burns come from?

Sorry but if a man doesn't find a female attractive then he wouldn't even bother to text her never mind alert her to your knowledge of their sordid affair. I really don't know how you trust again after this, it's basically an affair but he's making it worse by continuing to lie to you which indicates to me is he really serious about sorting out his marriage with you? You need time apart, he needs to go, definitely. Until then don't decide anything, get rid and then take your time to decide what you want, it's not about him anymore, he's had his fun.

He can't' remember exactly when it started?! What absolute bollocks. Absolute total bollocks. What a coward this man is. He STILL thinks he can pick and choose his reality. That he wouldn't have cheated if you had been a better couple, that he gave her 'shoulder massage' recently. Oh god I want to vom sometimes. I can understand an affair but this bullshit TAPDANCING after the fact to try and get out of the full sight of his own reflection. It's horrible.

Don't discount the fact his mother may have known already, hence her comment.

And you discovered this. He didn't TELL you. This would have gone on years more if you hadn't.

Don't worry about the future with the children, that will be fine, whatever. But he is destroying his with this lying. What is the nature of his current contact with her. I bet he is oscillating and lying to you both.

So sorry for the pain.

This man feels like a weed slowly suffocating you. He's panicking, obviously, and upping the ante of pressure on you - all the more reason for him to leave and give you the time and space you need.

So he was talking to a woman he has been screwing for god knows how many years about getting carpet burns with you his wife and she was still happy to be joking and sleeping with him. Don't think so.

He doesn't know when it started or how long?

The pile of bull shit surrounding your H is so high I am surprised he hasn't drowned in it!

Now he is making out it is all your fault.

Same as some of the others I am appalled and disgusted that he would allow a present from the woman he was screwing to be displayed in your son's room all these years. How vile. That tells you every thing about his level of respect for you. Every time he walked in that room he would know who that was from and what he had done with her behind your back. What a foul man.

How dare he tell this to his mother. I bet my life he hasn't told her the full undiluted facts. Why? Because he is still not telling you the full undiluted facts so no way is he going to risk someone else knowing.

The big problem is thus: you love him. There can't be a person on this board who doesn't know what that means. But the truth is that the person you thought you loved, didn't actually exist. Selfishly he just let you think they did.

Standing in the place of that infallible life partner is this new person, a person you probably don't even like.

Being married to a cheater is a bit like walking around in beer goggles.

( NB Lottie: I wasn't referring to the OP when I talked about it being an active rather than passive process. I was talking about the cheater with inappropriate boundaries.Things don't 'just happen': an affair is a choice, as is fidelity.)

You sound like you've been through the emotional equivalent of a car crash OP.
Dont be afraid to insist on some space to decide what YOU want to do, if he truly loves you he'll be happy to give you this. He can also have the experience of being away from his family, to fully cement the crapness of what's he's done.
I'd concentrate on practical things at the mo, a free half hr at the solicitor to see where you stand on legalities with the house, financials etc. Maybe have a look at where your finances would be if you did decide to kick him to the kerb - entitledto is a good website to use re tax credits and the like.
Personally, I would struggle to come to terms with the length and amount of deceit he's shown, what sort of person is he to do this. It's your decision, but there's much lovelier men out there than this to spend the rest of your days with.

Just a thought and l am sorry if l am way of the mark.

Could the reason be that he is begging for another chance. l love you and only you etc is so that you don't go to the school to expose them as the cheating scum that they are.
I am sure the education authorities and parents of the pupils would just love to know what goes on during school time.
He is doing damage limitation solely to save his own skin

Oh I see Lilly - I am sorry. In that case what you say makes perfect sense.

"well, things have been building up for a while haven't they?"
She also expressed concern for the effect it could have on his career.

I wonder what version he gave his mum. Let me guess, "Poor me!"

A boy's best friend is his mother, after all.

Maybe his mother was trying to get you to join her in the "mummy" game. That is, "Bull, are we not both worried about his career here; we should be, and not jeopardise it."

The plain answer to that us surely, yes, he has played with fire here, hasn't he? Likely it is already the subject of gossip. Whether it stops or not, it may become more public. How foolish of him."

In other words, his issue, not yours.

Boy, he just lies and lies and lies and lies, doesn't he? .

You however seem amazingly strong, considering the express train you've just been hit by.

Let his mum worry about him, that's her job. You are now free to make the right decisions for yourself.

Bullinthesea the likely reason he won't tell you when this affair started is because it would pre-date any difficulties you were having in your relationship. The repeated references to 5 years are probably designed to enter your consciousness as a time period about which you can both legitimately look back and acknowledge that there were seemingly intractable issues between you.

If you want to know the true chronology and timescale of this affair, try to find out the date they first actually met or interacted. This is now widely acknowledged to be the true starting point of affairs and it's often long before the emotional or physical affair starts in earnest.

You mentioned in one of your posts that you suspected it has been going on for 7 years because of the birthing gift.

Be prepared to consider it might be an even longer time period than that.

Your MIL won't have been told by him the real start date of this affair. She probably assumes it's been something that happened in the last 2 years at most, hence her comment that things have been building up for a while.

They have. They've been building up from the moment this affair became a thought in your husband's head.

The challenge for you and unsuspecting others (like your MIL) is that because this has been happening over such a long period of time, it can be virtually impossible to recall accurately what things were like before this all started. But that process is made even more difficult by not knowing what date to use as a starting point for that trawl through the memory banks.

You might find it helpful to get some information from sources other than your husband, who is still finding ways to distort the truth. Do you know when your husband started working with this woman for example? Is there any way you can find that information?

People react in a variety of ways to a sudden and brutal realisation that their lives were not as they seemed and it is particularly devastating to uncover such a long term betrayal. Some cope with the initial shock by experiencing an urgent and all-consuming need to check facts, dates, old diaries, phone bills or bank statements and at least part of this process is to find a comforting reliability in things that cannot lie. The over-arching motivation however is to attempt to make sense of a chunk of time for which the memories have become distorted or tainted in some way.

My advice to you is to do what you need to do and if you feel the need to bury yourself in factual details and memory joggers right now, allow that obsession. It is a very normal process. Try to get as much information from sources that cannot lie or who have no reason to and above all, get some space to think however you achieve that. Unless you are certain now that you cannot forgive such long-term duplicity, don't be rushed by anyone into making any firm decisions.

You might want to regard this phase as the information-gathering period when it is as important to gain a true sense of the past however many years of your life, as it is to make decisions about the future.

I agree with Charbon.

Bull, my own H was unfaithful via the net for at least 5 and a half years. He dates it from 6 months before I found the first bit of evidence, photos in received files, which he managed to explain away due to my computer ignorance at the time.

So I can really relate to that feeling of having had a big chunk of your life turned into Alice in wonderland territory.

One thing I did was write a calendar list on a word document and keep going back and adding things. Eg I started with holidays and new jobs- either of us- and anything else I could remember.

Bit by bit, over a month or more, I built up a better picture. Add even silly things, like any big rows , your diagnosis etc.

I was able in this way at least to verify the truth about his dates, as noted up thread.

It helps to go back beyond the first date you suspect, even to when you first met.

I can see it might look a bit strange to someone who hasn't been there, but it is hard to describe the feeling of having not been in your own real life.

One, really well put.

Very sadly you can tell people who have not been betrayed on MN, by the flippant attitude they have in their comments - even if they don't mean to be flippant, their innocence shines through in the assumption that it can all be explained through the old reasonable 50//50 rules.

It is very hard to explain the complete sense of unreality that being so lied to does, that you have been in a life you had no knowledge of, at all. I used to say that I wanted life to come with the 'this way up' arrow of packing boxes - someone tell me what is up and what is down.

It is simply the cruellest thing you can do to another person who loves you.

Charbon lovely to hear from you!

Charbon, can you venture an answer to this?

MillyMollyMandy says something so important:

Its very hard to deal with an affair. Your oh seems to have been trying very to turn things around hasn't he but if you are bringing it up every day then I don't think any relationship can survive the constant stress that that brings. I know its hard but if you really want to move on and start afresh then you have to let go and start a new relationship with him. If you can let go of the affair (which is totally understandable) then maybe you have to call it a day as you and he cannot live like that. Relationships can and do survive affairs especially when the husband is prepared to do as much as yours has done but 8 months of daily picking over the wound will definitely kill off whatever you are trying to rebuild. What happened is mind blowing. If he has said that he has no love left then maybe he cant do it anymore. What do you want Op? Do you think there is any chance that he will try again if you can move on? Do you want to?

• I don't know what the answer is. Because, at this very moment there is a disconnect. You ARE traumatised. You ARE obsessed. You ARE thinking about it all the time. You ARE furious, wounded, all things that are hard and ugly.

• So you have to swallow these feelings down?????? I call this 'eating shit'. Swallowing the humiliation, the hurt, the shame, the grief, the rage.

WHAT DO YOU DO? It is kind of not dealt with in our IC. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

Wobbly - I think in that case, the betrayer has to eat shit by allowing the betrayed party to have the occasional rant, listen and apologise. As time goes on, these outbursts should lessen in terms of frequency and intensity.